Stories about insanely cheap people

My sister still has her original nose!

Beyond disgusting, and that’s not just “cheap”. There are mental health issues going on with your aunt. You must have wondered how many times that chocolate sauce was recycled before it was served to you.

Absolutely, R2. The aunt is very fucked up. She is in her late 60s and 70s but acts like the preadolescent she taught.

I have an aunt who is a compulsive coupon-clipper and who cannot resist anything 'free'. She has bins full of 'personal size' soaps, shampoos and lotions she has swiped from hotels and casinos where she has stayed. She's in her 80s and could easily live out her life without buying another bar of soap or bottle of shampoo, yet she can't resist, and swipes more. Her favorite lunch is to browse through Wegmans and fill herself up on the food samples they give. It's a psychological disorder.

R1 I LOLed

I know someone who has had the same bath towels for 25 years. She also washes with cheap powder detergent. As a kindness I bought her a set of moderately priced plush towels and a matching bath mat.

Within a month, the nice towels had lost all fluff and felt like sand paper. She explained that she had been washing them with the bargain detergent but had "no idea" why all the fluff was gone.

Some of us don't like plush/fluff. I like my towels rougher, as long as they're fairly thick.

Yes, I'm aware of what I just typed. LOL

OP, your aunt may have been raised by parents/family suffering from post-Depression-era PTSD, whose habits have been marked by extreme austerity. I've known a few like that.

I very briefly dated someone who suggested dinner at his for that night, we went to the supermarket and he was selecting mushrooms but before bagging them, twisted off and discarded the stalks as "I won't be cooking them - why pay?".

This was a guy with a top of the range Mercedes 4/4, two other cars - an Audi TT and a Porsche Cayenne, owned his house and his beach house and had an investment property portfolio and owned a string of stores selling high-end sound equipment. So it wasn't being cheap, just "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves".

It worked for him, but completely put me off.

R9 “So it wasn't being cheap, just "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves".

That’s why that cheap fucker is rich.

OP. - You might want to decline your Aunts offer of ice cream the next time you visit.

Well yes, R10 - that was my point.

All that money and he couldn't enjoy it.

I had a great uncle who dropped a dime in a snowbank and went back the next day with a shovel to find it.

He and his wife lived in cramped apartments for most of their marriage. They built a nice little ranch house. They lived in it three years, decided they hated it and went right back to a dumpy Easton, PA apartment.

I had a coworker once, let’s call her Susan. Susan had this little routine whenever we went out to eat as a group, back in the days before restaurants happily split checks for tables of frazzled coworkers. She’d rummage through her purse, let out a dramatic sigh, and go, “Oh no, I don’t have any cash on me!”

Of course, we’d all pitch in, figuring out our bills and tips, and Susan would graciously offer to cover everything with her credit card. “So helpful” we’d all think. But then I noticed something: Susan wasn’t tipping.

The first time, I thought, “Maybe I didn’t see that right.” Benefit of the doubt and all. But the second time? Oh, I saw it. She signed that receipt without leaving a dime for the server and walked out with everyone’s tips covering her Cobb salad.

There wasn’t a third time. Some lessons you only need to learn twice.

A gay couple, same ages as us, who were close friends of my ex.

Eating out, they always split one dinner and drank iced water with lemon. They gorged on biscuits or bread, devoured their main dish and sides, and took the largest shares of appetizers others ordered “for the table.” After dinner, they always asked for to go boxes and scraped anything left on others’ plates into them. No, they had no pets at home.

My ex hosted and treated guests for a dinner for my 40th birthday at an upscale restaurant. Typically for my ex, he invited a bunch of his friends and none of mine. These cheapskates had mixed drinks, ordered wine, and very expensive entrees. My ex had brought a cake from a good bakery, which he paid the server to serve. They took the leftover cake with them without asking. My gift? A couple bottles of cleaning sprays they picked up at the Dollar Tree (no-name window cleaner, furniture wax, bathroom cleanser).

The ex was fiercely protective of these twats. After we split, one of them emailed me and asked me to return some of the shit they’d given my ex, who did not take it with him. Things like kitchen storage canisters, a cheap set of paring knives, and corn on the cob holders!

Despite the sad comic relief they provided, I am happy to have those idiots out of my life.

My husband pulling the stems off cherries before weighing them at the grocery store.

My friend's sister in law is so stingy she brought 1 tomato to the family barbeque and then sliced it so thin you could read a newspaper through it.

That’s one cheap bitch!

Your husband isn't a Kiwi called Tony, perchance, R16?

I knew a Swiss lady who reused greeting cards. She would just cross out the name and write yours in instead. Then she would turn the envelope over and use the other side to write the address and put on a new stamp (and just cross off the old addresses). So she was the cheapest person I ever knew, but she was an in-home caregiver for old people and she always chose people who had no heirs and would then inherit all their stuff. She got an entire house in Santa Barbara that way, so she was pretty darn smart!

Last Christmas, my partner’s mother gifted me a miniature bottle of red wine stain remover.

Paging George Costanza to the white courtesy phone!

OP, never eat anything your aunt prepares, she probably dumpster dives for food.

My sister is absurdly cheap. For my birthday one year she gave me a “homemade spa kit.” It was a Ziploc bag with one tea light candle, a packet of Epsom salt, and a printed YouTube link for meditation music. She proudly declared that she had put it together for under a dollar. I couldn’t even be mad, I had to laugh.

She will also reuse paper towels, saying it’s “environmentally conscious.” Imagine seeing someone hang a soggy paper towel to dry on their balcony like it’s a fine linen.

Neither of our parents were cheapskates. It’s a mystery where it came from.

she brought 1 tomato to the family barbeque and then sliced it so thin you could read a newspaper through it.

That's a great party trick.

My friend Rhoda gave me a basket of kisses.

[quote]Last Christmas, my partner’s mother gifted me a miniature bottle of red wine stain remover.

Well, she was just sending you a message (you messy drunk).

One Christmas my friend's mother gave him a can of baked beans as a present. The same Christmas another friend's father gave him a used spare tyre for Christmas, that didn't even fit his car.

[quote] I very briefly dated someone who suggested dinner at his for that night, we went to the supermarket and he was selecting mushrooms but before bagging them, twisted off and discarded the stalks as "I won't be cooking them - why pay?".... So it wasn't being cheap, just "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves".

This IS being CHEAP. I don't care if you're driving a Porsche. This guy was an ASSHOLE.

R26 did you give her a basket of hugs?

A friend's aunt recycles tea bags over and over---and then over again. She hangs them up in her kitchen on some thick string with clothes pins. Some of them are dusty and totally disgusting even to look at, let alone make tea with.

The brother-in-law of a friend’s cousin was so cheap he once shot a man just for snoring!

I was reading a financial planning advice column and someone wrote in for general advice.

He had 6 million dollars and was too cheap to pay someone for help.

I shared a house with a married couple. We took turns buying the toilet paper. When it was my week I got rolls from the five and dime. The woman of the couple was furious, saying the towels fell apart in her hands.

My husband’s so cheap, he keeps all his cash in a money belt and I’ve only spent $100 on clothes since we’ve been married!

R21- I HATE that expression GIFTED.

Erm, OP? Why was your family WASTING good chocolate sauce? You sound like a bunch of tacky, inbred grifters!

R21, I’m guessing that was something she had in the cupboard.

FYI: You can cook mushroom stems.

I once fucked a trick who was so cheap that he declined a shower after because he said he planned on getting fucked again later and could reuse the lube.

And it was MY lube!

Good LORD r40

Too much R40.

[quote] I know she would rip my face off

Pics please.

I briefly fucked a guy who would pick up pennies and random bits of lost jewellery in the street, boasting he’d made his earrings from the meltdown. I don’t know what worse, that or the tacky-looking finished articles.

Dumped that afternoon…

OP, you lost me on your second word by capitalizing needlessly and erroneously.

Oh, dear.

Work on your faults before criticizing those of others. You have appeared niggardly while complaining of cheapness.

Oh, shut up.

My great aunt Eunice was well known for being cheap. When I was a kid and she was visiting, I asked if she wanted to play a card game with us that involved betting pennies. She declined. When I told her we had a whole jug of pennies that we used for the game, she decided she would play. Too cheap to even lose a few pennies to little kids.

At Christmas my wealthy mafioso aunt would re-gift gift baskets from the vendors of her husband's "construction" company.

She would remove the more expensive items from the Hickory Farms type food baskets and re-wrap them yet leave on the original tag which would read "Merry Christmas from Joe's Cement Company or Tony's Asphalt".

I read Mary Trump's book a few years ago and she said Ivana Trump would do the same thing at Christmas! Re-gift food baskets but first remove the caviar and expensive items and just leave crackers and candy for the new recipient.

My very rich aunt and uncle, as in tour bus RV coach rich, at a family reunion, went around and had everyone spit their watermelon seeds in a cup so she didn't have to buy seed the next year, they shit cash.

Instead of buying popsicles in the summer time.....my cheap aunt would freeze KoolAid in an ice cube tray with toothpicks stuck in the cubes.

And she recycled the toothpicks.

My mom would sew up the holes in my falling-apart socks when I was a kid. Over and over and over. The kind of socks you could buy in bulk as a 6 pack for pennies a pair, at the discount clothing store.

We were middle class and had money to cover all the basics, but she was so stupidly and irrationally day-to-day cheap about everything. The other moms kind of ostracized her socially over it and she could never figure it out.

I've had a couple of friends who had no car. I do have a car and ended up picking them up, dropping them off, etc. Never was offered some gas money. I would consider that cheap. Do I need the money? No.

This may be cheap or PTSD. My mother told me she had a co-worker who would steal the office biscuits. Everyone knew but said nothing because he was a Holocaust Survivor.

R53, not cheap. That’s just trauma, and it’s very sad.

I wouldn't attribute stealing food from the office to being a Holocaust survivor.

She said it was unnecessary for her to buy granulated sugar because she collected the sugar that fell off of the donuts at the bottom of the donut box. She begrudgingly supplied a dozen donuts to the parents without partners meeting she hosted.

Holocaust trauma runs deep. If someone survived literal starvation, swiping a few extra biscuits at work isn’t exactly surprising.

It’s not uncommon for seniors who endured the Depression to hoard food either. Survival habits die hard.

I HAD a friend who I traveled to spend Christmas with. I was hungry the day I arrived and she served me a bunch of leftover foods from her office holiday party.

R58 And what about it? You’re the problem, not her. I’m sure the food was good.

I know someone who took out hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from banks then refused to pay them back and was elected president twice.

When I was a kid I always had to bathe in the same bathwater as my brother after he was done.

When I was a kid I had to stay at my aunt & uncle’s house in Queens for a few days during a heat wave. The room I was in had a window A/C but my uncle had it on a timer to turn off an hour after I went to bed and forbade me to turn it back on. I ended up sleeping outside on a lawn chair the last couple of nights and he let me rather than run the A/C. My parents were livid when they found out and never made me stay there again.

I don't understand how the scoop back would work

A friend of mine has NEVER mailed a greeting card to me. She instead gets in her car, drives to my home and manually puts the card inside my mailbox. Every birthday and Christmas for decades. Too cheap to buy some postage stamps and too stupid to realize the cost of fuel outweighs the cost of a stamp.

My mother kept day old bread in the freezer, thinking it would be okay to eat once defrosted. But to me it always tasted stale. She used to make my school lunch sandwiches on the weekend and freeze them and dole them out every day in the week. I never ate them. I stupidly kept them in my school bag and one day she found them all. There was hell to pay.

I had a great aunt and a great uncle who were very well-off financially but lived like they were in poverty. They lived in a small two bedroom house in a not-so-great neighborhood and walking into it was like walking into the 1940s (in the 1990s). The wallpaper was peeling, the furniture was old and ratty, etc., nothing had been updated or changed since the 40s. They would go to a fast food restaurant and split a hamburger for dinner as if that was all they could afford to eat. My great uncle died and then my great aunt less than a year later. They never had kids so my father and uncle were in charge of their estate. They were sitting on a small fortune. They could've lived a VERY comfortable lifestyle in a nice neighborhood in a nice house but chose to live like they were practically indigent for fifty years. It was heartbreaking.

I didn’t see eye to eye with my dad about many things but I always respected his attitude that (as long as you can afford it) money is meant to be spent.

A friend of mine got married. His now ex wife told me that when she moved into his house, he expected g he er to pay rent. She was already paying half the household expenses, but he wanted herctonn no pay rent is she was going to livevrgrr. Age divorcedvhimbistead. He we neg T to ca NBC ads. On the way home he racked up $30 in tolls, he enaijed sobb N sone he k owns to works in transportation i Toronto abd asked him if he knew shyyy try one on the provincial level who could “take care@ if the tolls for him.

R68 - what language is that post in?

r68, lay off the booze.

R64, possible OCD or miserliness in your friend aside, hand-delivering such holiday wishes and messages is an old tradition that postdates the arrival of official mail systems. It was considered more polite than mere posted mail.

Since today few people seem to maintain former traditional forms of sharing while they're also being inconsistent with the many communication tools available, I'll take the friend's comparatively stellar thoughtfulness.

OP smells like troll ass.

Does using teabags three times count?

Did r68 survive his stroke?

R71, wouldn't that predate the arrival of official mail rather than post date it?

I'm not sure OP's story can be topped.

What’s with the run of authenticated posters at the top of this thread? Same person?

My late uncle (b. 1913) had a wife and five children. He was so miserly he had a strict rule: No flushing the toilet until there's a #2. If no one had a bm that day, the toilet doesn't get flushed.

My uncle this Thanksgiving. He brought carrots to the meal as his contribution in one of those plastic takeaway boxes from a restaurant (the black plastic with a clear lid) The whole day he kept saying "Where is my container, where is the lid? I need that back, don't lose it." Finally, my sister opened her cupboard pulled out about five of them, with the lids and went "here will you shut the fuck up about the free damn container now?"

A now former friend would offer to collect everybody's cash and put the tab on his card when we'd all go to dinner, saying that he'd get our change back to us "next time", which never came. I don't recall if tipping was an issue. I wrote about him in this thread.

My mom was born in 1935 and was a Depression baby. When she'd shop for groceries she'd buy the smallest size of an item, say, Pine-Sol. Because of that she'd run out of things all the time. I once tried to teach her that it's cheaper to buy larger sizes of items but she'd never listen. Back in the early 80s we had a dog that was Husky and Malamute and weighed at least 50 pounds and ate like a horse. I came home from work once to see that she had bought a large bag of generic dog food, which was a fad at the time, and the label looked like this. So I looked at the ingredients and it was mostly filler and there was an advisory that it should only be fed to old and immobile dogs because of the low nutrition content. My mom argued that it was ok if he ate it because when he got hungry she'd feed him more. I told her if she fed that to him he'd starve to death. I put the bag in my car and bought him real dog food and made sure he didn't run out of that.

r78 I love your sister! That's how you deal with hoarders.

Stealth lesbian thread.

But I’ll bet the OP can, R75!

I lost a friend to cheapness. We had many interests in common related to allied professions and had travelled together many times on day trips and the occasional longer excursion. Every time he would arrange the lodging, calling upon colleagues and old friends who were well prepared for guests because they had money and lovely houses with guest cottages or guest wings. Our expenses were down to transportation and dining. But our last overnighter was one that he suggested and I arranged the details as he had no connections with a spare set of guest rooms. On the rare occasion when he had to spring for lodgings, he delighted in finding the most dodgy and squalid place (and sharing every detail of his slumming to his friends and family -- and howled with delight when he travelled with his mother and put her up in such places.)

Our trip was just 4 days, and 3 nights, and I warned him that I would pick some historic inns or decent looking places that were barely more expensive than a shitty motel on a bypassed highway. All fine, he said, he understood. The three hotels that I discussed with him in advance (knowing he's a cheap fuck) were all about $80 a night as I recall -- compared to $60-someting for the cheapest alternative, and $20 or $40 less than the more pretentious places. But it wasn't fine. He couldn't suppress his cheap ways and he immediately started speaking fondly of dodgy bare lightbulb and screaming hooker motels where he had stayed in the past. No. You can do that on your own, if you want to save $20; I'm sticking to the plan. He laughed it off and said okay.

By the last night of the trip he pleaded with me to change hotels and take a nasty motel on the outskirts of town. It was $20 cheaper. I laughed and said the hotel I had booked was not refundable on the day of the booking. He pouted quietly then exploded with anger that I had pulled into a gas station where the price was 7-cents more than at the station a few miles back. I told him not to worry, I would pay for the gas. No problem. But he was fuming mad the rest of the trip, something I had never seen even a hint of before because he was so mild-mannered. I apologized for the lodgings and explained that it was less than $60 difference for each of us to spend three nights in a decent place as opposed to a squalid place. He agreed but I could tell that he didn't.

After that trip we remained friends but at a greater distance, and planned I think only one day trip together after that, at the suggestion of a mutual friend. We got along okay, but where before he was always flattering of anything I said or did, now he was grumpy and quick to criticize. Anything. He would catch himself and stop from going too far. But it was an odd time and, after maybe 15 years of friendship and weekly contact, we grew apart.

That a man who had about $10M in assets and no debts or obligations would get so pissed off about $60 seemed a bit crazy. He had no problem spending any amount of money at a restaurant, for example, or spending money on himself, but small things like $20 extra for a hotel and 7-cents extra for a gallon of gasoline were his undoing.

R77 we had that rule when I was a little kid in the 60s. Because I was raised that way I thought everyone did it until I did a sleepover at my friend Glenn's house when I was around 10, who of course didn't have that rule. I got in trouble with his mom the first time I didn't flush at his house.

R71 smells like OLD, CHEAP MISER.

R85 / R77 - We had a house with a septic tank - it needed pumping out every so often, and as time went on more and more frequently — so my dad instituted the “only flush poo rule” when I was about 11. That stayed in effect until we finally got city sewer pipes on our street about 5 years later.

Unflushed urine provides such a pleasant odor to the house.

And now a seemingly innocent thread about niggardly behaviors has turned into a SCAT thread…..

Prince Harry is famous for never flushing the toilet, leaving the urine there.

Another poster admitted he only tips his doormen $100/each at the holidays. Can you imagine?!

R90 years ago I read that during a drought signs appeared in the loos at British royal residences stating "We don't pull for a pee" so maybe Harry learned that at home.

I've seen people scrounge the sidewalk for abandoned cigarette butts just to have one kick of nicotine.

My late father (born in 1929) was cheap, but in a good way. He would reuse the same paper towel at breakfast, lunch and dinner, folded neatly at his place setting. He would cross the street to pick up a nickel. He loved his ritual of clipping coupons from the Sunday paper and would crow over good ones ("a dollar off Raisin Bran!"). He had a gadget that would hold bottles upside down to get the last drop of ketchup and a slider for his toothpaste tube. He wore the same 2 sets of "house clothes" after work for probably 40 years--two pairs of pants, one khaki and one army green, and two plaid shirts, which he would rotate. He took impeccable care of everything he owned.

That said, he took people out to dinner, gave generously to charity, and went on one week of beachfront vacation per year, paying for others in the family to come along. So he was generous in certain ways, miserly in others.

r94 my grandmother (born in 1912 into a poor Italian immigrant family) was very much the same way. A perfect cross between frugality and generosity.

Interestingly, my other grandmother (both in 1918 to a middle-class family from Tuscany who ran a successful grocery when they settled in the US) grew up with much more money and privilege and turned out to be frugal and mean.

They both experienced the Depression, but the family of the second one lost much more. Her frugality paid off, though: she died a millionaire.

Paid off for her heirs, that is...

r96 she ended up in a memory care facility and so it worked out for her: those places aren't cheap. It really had nothing to do with her heirs. My dad jokes that she would have gladly spent her last dime.

Both my parents are from Scotland and were kids when the "cherries" bombed the UK. They grew up fairly poor, and my mother is insanely cheap because of it. Growing up, she would make Sunday dinner, which was Roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding. It was the cheapest cut of meat. Seems extravagant for a cheap woman but wait, there is more. Monday was cold leftover roast beef with gravy warmed up to the nuclear level as she decided the gravy would heat up the beef. Tuesday's dinner was Roast beef sandwiches. Wednesday was BBQ beef, which was the leftover meat scrapes and fat mixed with ketchup heated up in a pot. Thursday was pizza day because the local Pizza chain would have any pizza for 2.99 on Thursdays. Fridays we would have a "quiche: which was just egg pie. Saturdays were our treat. We got happy meals. Then it all started again.

Doesn't sound so bad R98. Bet you grew up nice and strong

R74, the tradition of hand-delivering continued after official mail systems. Does that help?

I'm glad you're trying despite your autism.

I three times noticed different lunch and dinner acquaintances taking some of my tip from the table. I replaced it each time and then dropped the person.

Poverty was never the issue. Each one was CHEAP, and misers tend to be sneaking thieves, as well.

Many people are selectively cheap in certain areas of life, and spend more in other areas than other groups do.

And, no, I'm not specifically referring to my African-American and Jewish sisters and brothers or first-generation immigrants or women or Asians, university faculty, Latin Americans except for Uruguayans, brewery workers, rural eat-in-town types, lesbians who aren't on the make, office drabs and shop bottoms, or - did I mention my African-American sisters and brothers?

No matter the price of the dinner at a restaurant, my dad never leaves more than a dollar or two on the table. I always wait until he leaves and then make it a 20% tip.

I had an uncle (by marriage) who was so cheap, he would go out of his way to avoid paying a 35 cent toll. It's rubbed off on one of his daughters. Went to the movies with her once, and she suggested we buy popcorn at a convenience store o bring b/c it was cheaper than buying it in the theatre. I refused to do it.

Academics are amongst the cheapest people. They will ask for a receipt for every purchase while away at an academic conference or coming to campus to give a talk. They will get reimbursed by their schools or as part of their honoraria. I mean a receipt for every purchase. I arranged to have the president of the American Historical Association come to the university where I teach to give a talk on his area of research. He came for the day. I picked him up at the airport in the morning and drove him back there at the end of the day. I understood having to pay for his plane tix, cab fare to get from/to his home to/from the airport, and honorarium for his talk. When he sent me those receipts, he also sent receipt for sodas and a package of chewing gum he bought at the airport. Talk about cheap!

Why pay everything else but complain about a per diem?

My dad squeezed three dimes out of a quarter once.

Not sure if this can be called cheap or just rude. I asked for a meeting with a supervisor. He said I had five minutes and he placed a stop watch in front of me so I could tell how much time I had left.

College Junior Year Abroad program. I was paired (dormed with) a legit American Billionaire princess, whose father was a Banker of "Middle-Eastern" descent. Super fun girl, laid back, no pretensions for all her obvious wealth. However one idiosynchrocy stood out: her particular skin-flint habits. She had an extensive designer wardrobe that probably should have laundered at the cleaners, but she insisted on hand washing it all in a bucket. Ok. She spoke fondly of her grandmother who taught her to "hold on to a penny". Fair. Then one day she really flipped me out. Insisting she needed a haircut, she utterly refused to go to a salon in this metropolitan city. Instead, she went to the local department store, and bought a relatively good pair of scissors. Of course, she followed course by cutting her hair. Didn't look to bad honestly. But the real kicker was the next day, when I saw her return from an errand with a same shopping bag from the department store she had gone to before. I aske her, "What did you buy today K-?" "Oh, nothing she replied. I returned the scissors. Why would I keep them when I finished using them already." Fuck.

R106 I love that 5 minute stopwatch idea and am adopting!

[quote]No matter the price of the dinner at a restaurant, my dad never leaves more than a dollar or two on the table. I always wait until he leaves and then make it a 20% tip.

Ok, R102 brings up something that pisses me off, that is to say, how many of you refuse to tip ever? I get that the trend today is to be expected to tip at a point of sale register but I'm dismayed at how many people absolutely refuse to tip service people. I usually leave something in the tip jar if I get a cup of coffee or will add a tip to an online order, what's the problem if you drop an extra dollar or two at the time?

r99 did I mention she used to wash off the paper plates to reuse?

Ever see "Long Day's Journey into Night"?

True story. My partner is from the Philippines and is the youngest of 9 children. When he was a kid his mom was so cheap she bought cheap toothpaste from China that contained so much fluoride that it burned the mouth. He begged his mom to buy him another brand that didn’t burn, and he is now the only one in his family that still has his teeth.

So, too much fluoride is bad for you?

[quote] I usually leave something in the tip jar if I get a cup of coffee or will add a tip to an online order, what's the problem if you drop an extra dollar or two at the time?

Former restaurant worker here.

I think the problem is the pervasiveness of asking for a tip. Seems like there's a tip option on every transaction.

When you say "online order," what are you talking about?

I would like the option to tip at the *end* of the service / delivery / Uber ride, etc.

My neighbor lady asked her brother to build a deck and two levels of stairs. He worked on it for over a week in the hot sun and she repaid him by cooking one fucking spaghetti dinner. Years later she kept her mother at her home when her mother was in hospice care. I told a friend of mine I couldn't believe she would do something so unselfish and he said "Bet she wants to sell her mom's house and keep the money instead of paying a nursing home". He was right.

I worked as NYU law school and each Tuesady therere was a lunchtime speaker and luncheon with soup or salad, a main course, and desert with beverage afterwards Attendance was 35 to 40 each Tuesady, until a charge of $5 was imposed. After that, the attendanc was never more than 15. Law lecturers on a salary not less than $250000..

When discussing my mother’s “thrifty” nature, my father replied, “she’s tighter than the bark on a tree.”

There are many expressions for this. I didn't grow up with this one, but it is colorful: "So and so squeezes a nickel 'til the buffalo shits".

In England we say "squeeze a pound til the Queen cries"

r119 my father used to say 'Cheap as Chips"

My Italian grandmother had a word for someone who was tight with money-BRACCHIACORTA. Literally, short arm, i.e. someone whose arm wasn't long enough to reach into their pocket to pull out some money. 💲😖💲

My father says "they have the first nickel they ever made."

[quote] She said it was unnecessary for her to buy granulated sugar because she collected the sugar that fell off of the donuts at the bottom of the donut box.

She apparently was too stupid to realize that powdered sugar is partially made up of corn starch to keep it from getting gummy in the box.

[quote] Prince Harry is famous for never flushing the toilet, leaving the urine there.

That likely comes from his late grandmother, QEII. She was notoriously frugal with expenses at Buckingham Palace and once was quite concerned with the water bill. She had signs put up in all the bathrooms that said 'NO PULL FOR A PEE'. That place must have reeked from all that fetid piss.

I think that habit is rather normal for many British and people from the continent, especially old people who lived during or just after WWII.

I admit to snapping off the ridiculously long stems on yellow squash before I bag them. They leave up to 2" of stem on the things and I'm damn sure not paying for that. I also peel off the dirty outer leaves of cabbage heads. I'm not paying for all those filthy leaves they leave on just to make the cabbage cost more.

Sometimes stores will cut off the outer layers of onions and cabbage, which is nice. I think they realize that the produce just looks better and people are more likely to buy stuff in that state.

r125, how much could a couple of cabbage leaves cost? A few pennies if that much? Would their weight even register on the scale?

[quote]In England we say "squeeze a pound til the Queen cries"

There's also, 'First out of the taxi, last to the bar.'